In the last scene of Matt Walsh’s 2022 documentary, What Is a Woman?, Walsh finally gets around to asking his wife (instead of trans activists, gender studies professors, and psychologists, who are unable/unwilling to answer) the question that titles his film. She answers, “An adult human female . . . who needs help opening this,” as she hands her husband a pickle jar. The ending is good because it is so funny; but it is also good because while Mrs. Walsh gives a very basic, scientific answer to the question, the setting that couches her answer implies a greater answer behind the merely biological. The woman that Walsh asks knows what a woman is because she is living and breathing that reality. She is not only living the biological reality of being an “adult human female,” but the essential traits of womanhood seem to pervade her life: a wife and mother, using her gifts to preside over a home and nourish others, while relying on the strengths of the opposite sex to compliment and fill out her areas of weakness.
Walsh’s other interviewees attempted to answer his question without reference to biology. Walsh’s point that biology defines gender is enormously important. However, answering the question merely by biology will lead us back to the same problematic thinking by which we arrived in the first place. Because feminism has burned all cultural gender norms for women, “biological” women do not know how to be women in any other meaningful sense of the word. We do not understand or connect with feminine virtues or our feminine role in the world, which leaves us personally and relationally dissatisfied. At its worst, this lack either leads perfectly normal women to believe that something is wrong with them and to seek success in the world of sham masculinity, or it drives them to a pagan teaching of the divine feminine, where their doubts are answered with self-worship.
Transgender advocates wrongly asserts that gender is simply a state of mind, but they are right to notice that gender is something that a person acts out. We wear certain clothes, talk a certain way, and pursue certain activities that align with the “role” we are playing as men and women. When we act out roles that are contrary to God’s general revelation (the Book of Nature, i.e., our biological sex), it is an abomination. To act out roles different to the ones we have been given is to spit in the face of an Almighty Playwright.
On the other hand, to take seriously the role assigned to us, and to study and play the part to the best of our ability, is a glory and glorifies the Author. When we let our biology, God’s specially revealed Word, and Christian women of the past teach us about womanhood, we can begin to grow in feminine virtues and in confidence of God’s calling for our lives.
Biology
While we can err by acknowledging only biological distinctives of femaleness, thereby denying the unique cultural and spiritual roles to which those distinctives testify, careful observation of women’s physical makeup can teach us much about what type of role God had in mind when He designed women. As Matthew McAffee communicates in Sexuality, Gender, and the Church, “The physical characteristics of being male and female are intended to bear witness to an inner spiritual distinction between the two sexes.”[1] If we would affirm that gender is inextricably linked to biological sex, we ought to learn from what God’s design for our bodies teaches us.
God placed reproduction and nurturing at the center of women’s appearance and physical experience. The procreative aspects of a woman’s body make her immediately recognizable as a different creature than her counterpart. Her potential as a nurturing life-giver serves as one impetus for the creation of a new family unit—attraction to those physical feminine virtues is a key motivating factor for men to leave their family of origin and cleave to a wife in a new, productive family unit.
God also provided womankind with a physical experience that is in constant, predictable flux. On a micro, month-to-month level, women’s hormones rise and fall like the tide, creating an environment where a wide range of problems and solutions (both emotional and physical) are addressed on a regular basis. For this reason, women have been associated throughout history with the ocean and the moon. Women are not the same thing day after day; they are a circling pattern that weaves in dissonance and resolution.[2]
On a macro-level, the experience of adolescence, childbearing, and change of life is another type of tide-pattern in which a woman has a vastly different physical experience and relational purpose as her body moves through the dance of the years. While men exemplify the virtue of constancy and naturally bring stability to the male-female relationship, women contribute gradience and flexibility. In architecture, stability and flexibility are essential aspects of buildings that can stand the tests of time and tempest. We have a very wise Designer.
Much more could be said about how a woman’s biology tells a story about femininity; I do not have space to examine distinctions in muscle mass, arm crooks, and bone density. My point in drawing out these few truths is that cultural manifestations of femininity (e.g., dress, work, social conventions, arts, food) must be in line with what we learn about women from their biology: they are changing, nurturing, lifegiving, soft, and vulnerable.
Scripture
While our biology tells us about the basic distinctions between the masculine and the feminine, Scripture teaches our telos as women—feminine virtue.[3]
The New Testament has several key passages (e.g., Titus 2:3–5; 1 Peter 3:1–6; 1 Timothy 2:9–15; 1 Corinthians 14:34–35) that encourage women to avoid worldly conduct (two of these involve reference to how women present themselves in appearance) and to put on virtues fitting to godly womanhood. All of these passages mention a spirit of submissiveness in the contexts of the home and in gathered worship; also repeated are admonitions to exercise self-control, to be both respectful and respectable, to exude quietness and gentleness, and to live in purity and modesty.
The Old Testament, especially Proverbs, communicates the power that women can exercise in their relationships with men for both good and evil. Women can use their sexual power to seduce foolish men (Proverbs 7) or to satisfy the good desires of their husbands (Proverbs 5:18–19; Song of Solomon 7:10). Women also have a special power over the direction of their homes and the success and reputation of their husbands. A wise woman builds her home and brings glory to her husband (Proverbs 14:1; 31:23), while a foolish woman is intolerable and a dismay (Proverbs 21:19; 12:4), the destruction of both her home and her husband.
In addition to Scripture’s straightforward commentary on womanhood and commands to women, God’s Word also presents us with a larger truth to which the existence of human femininity points. Marriage—the culmination of the male-female dynamic—is a picture of Christ and His Church. While all believers, male and female, are to aspire to the purity called for as Christ’s bride, washed in the water of the Word, women particularly can find inspiration and direction as they seek to play out their role in the drama of Man and Woman that pictures Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:21–33). Playing well the role of Woman has more at stake than even happy homes and healthy husbands; it has at stake an accurate depiction of the Church’s purity, submission, and joy in Christ.
History
Over the last two hundred years, the West has thrown off nearly every cultural manifestation of godly femininity for women. Although women today have a wide range of options about how to present themselves—ranging from the over-sexualized to the androgenous—we no longer hold to traditions of femininity that our forebears did. As the gospel spread over the West, our Christian mothers adopted behaviors and dress that were fitting for Christian women. How did Christian women of the past appropriately express their femininity?
Well, women worked at tasks that were appropriate for their strengths and gifts. They raised children; taught children; nursed babies; delivered babies; looked after the sick and elderly; cared for small livestock; produced, preserved, and prepared food; and made clothing and home items of use, comfort, and beauty.
They wore clothing appropriate for their biology and feminine glory. Dresses and skirts were made to fit a wide range of sizes, accommodating the changing nature of a woman’s body during childbearing years. Clothing honored the shape of a woman without immodestly revealing the details (usually). Married women, and often all women, veiled their heads in accordance with the common understanding of 1 Corinthians 11:2–16, as a symbol of adherence to God’s created order and authority structure.
We could easily write off these historical feminine behaviors as being practical in nature—“they didn’t have other options back then.” However, that view does great injustice to the intelligence and capabilities of our ancestors and adopts a premise of human progress that is not biblical. While the people of the past had practical limitations that shaped their choices, they also made conscious decisions about how life was to be lived based on their understanding of God and His world.
Although we cannot simply adopt the practices of a historical period (All times in history have something they did badly!), we can and should ponder why our Christian ancestors chose to live their lives the way they did and be humble enough to apply their principles in ways appropriate to our own setting.
Conclusion
I am glad Matt Walsh finally discovered what is a woman. That is a very important step in the right direction for our sexually confused culture. However, I hope that Christians today can look carefully and honestly at our biology, our Scriptures, and our history to answer the question how is a woman. Christian women today desperately need this direction if we are not to end up exactly back where we started in this century of sexual confusion.
[1] Matthew McAffee, “A Biblical Understanding of Sexuality, Gender, and Marriage,” in Sexuality, Gender, and the Church, by J. Matthew Pinson, Matthew Steven Bracey, Matthew McAffee, and Michael A. Oliver (Nashville: Welch College Press, 2016), 18.
[2] Traditional women’s crafts also have these features—for example, weaving, knitting and lacework, and basketry.
[3] I will not devote space here to reassuring the reader that women share in all the same benefits as men in terms of the Gospel of Christ. We share the imago Dei; we are personally regenerated by God when we place our faith in Christ, resulting in individual union with Christ. Women have no mediator but Christ. For more, see McAffee, “A Biblical Understanding of Sexuality, Gender, and Marriage,” in Sexuality, Gender, and the Church, referenced above.
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